With their unmistakably Islamic appearance and dress-sense, the three earnest young men working feverishly in a room festooned with charts and graphs did not look like apostles of New Labour.

But as they laid out the polling and campaigning methods aimed at securing the election of Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, a religious hardliner standing in next month's Iranian presidential election, it became clear they had one overriding role model; Tony Blair.

"We have studied Labour's [recent] election manifesto in detail and we have created a combination of that and ours," said Seiyid Amir Hossein Mokaberi, the manager of the planning and control office at Mr Qalibaf's Tehran campaign headquarters.

"We are not trying to copy Blair's political agenda. Our country is too different culturally, but what has been remarkable is that he has audited his plans in a way to make them accountable to people. Blair's proposals are such that, from a quantitative point of view, his success can be evaluated and measured after four years. We are trying to have the same structure and strategy for Mr Qalibaf."

It will no doubt come as a surprise to the prime minister that his enduring electoral success has provided the template for a conservative former revolutionary guard air force commander whose candidacy has the blessing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The parallels, however, are hard to deny.

In a strikingly Blairite echo, the Qalibaf campaign is deploying focus groups, whereby groups of voters around the country are interviewed to identify their concerns and so shape policy choices. From these sessions, Mr Qalibaf's strategists have compiled a list of 10 key priorities, including unemployment, inflation, social security and quality of life issues.

The Qalibaf equivalent of Millbank is a seven-storey office block equipped with the latest computer technology in an upmarket neighbourhood of north Tehran. From here, strategists and policy wonks confer daily on how to market Mr Qalibaf, 43, to Iran's vast army of young voters as a vigorous moderniser.

The result is a campaign that portrays Mr Qalibaf in soft focus. Mindful of the strong desire amongst many young Iranians for a more secular hue to life in the Islamic republic, Mr Qalibaf's publicity material makes little reference to his strong religious convictions. Instead, in an appeal to resurgent nationalism, posters quote from Ferdosi's epic poem, the Shahnameh or Book of Kings, written in the 10th century: "If Irandid not exist, I wish that my body also not exist."

Backed by campaign photographs, showing Mr Qalibaf - alone among the mainstream candidates - without a beard, his staff stay on-message by depicting their man as an adherent of globalisation, privatisation and smaller government who is willing, at least within limits, to build on the reformist agenda of the outgoing president, Mohammed Khatami.

"Mr Qalibaf believes in reforms but inside the framework of constitutional law and Islamic principles and values," said campaign media chief, Mehdi Tashakouri, whose spin doctor credentials are enhanced by actually possessing a PhD. "We think there is room to achieve more development and expand the changes that Mr Khatami has started."

It remains to be seen if Mr Qalibaf's populist message will resonate when voters go to the polls on June 17. Opinion polls consistently show him as the nearest challenger to the frontrunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the centrist former president, albeit trailing by a significant margin.

However, reformers and Rafsanjani supporters pour scorn on Mr Qalibaf's carefully honed image of studied reasonableness. In fact, they detect a sinister edge to his candidacy.

Mr Qalibaf, who has sought to boost his public standing by being pictured moonlighting as a commercial pilot for a local airline, is one of four hardline former revolutionary guard members - all staunchly loyal to the ideals of the Islamic revolution - approved as candidates by the watchdog council of guardians. Opponents portray their presence as an attempt by hardliners to stage a legal militarist coup d'etat.

They recall how Mr Qalibaf, as national police chief, co-authored a letter to Mr Khatami in 1999 warning that he would be ousted from power unless he cracked down hard on pro-reform student demonstrators. The demonstrations were subsequently crushed.

Analysts believe at least two of the other hardliners will drop out to consolidate the conservative vote behind Mr Qalibaf, thus increasing his electoral threat to Mr Rafsanjani.

Whether Mr Rafsanjani's campaign is equipped to resist is unclear. The 70-year-old former president, veteran of the revolution and consummate insider of the Islamic state, is trying to reinvent himself as the champion of young people's demands for more freedom in an effort to woo disillusioned pro-reform voters.

But compared to Mr Qalibaf, his campaign is ramshackle. "The other candidates started their activities five or six months ago, but we only established our headquarters five or six days ago," said Mohsen Vaheb, Mr Rafsanjani's campaign chief for Tehran province.

The Rafsanjani hope is that, come polling day, common sense will triumph over superior organisation and Blairite polling methods. "Iranians generally aren't interested in having these people run the country," Mr Vaheb said. "They require comfort, welfare, security and reform - people who have served in the military aren't used to those things."